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Victor Milner

Though he may not be so well known today, cinematographer Victor Milner was a force during Hollywood’s golden age. Equally adept at the intimate and the epic, he lent visual character to both drawing-room comedies and picturesque outdoor westerns, and the list of directors he collaborated with reads like a who’s who of cinematic legends: Cecil B. DeMille, Victor Fleming, Ernst Lubitsch, Anthony Mann, Preston Sturges, Raoul Walsh, William Wellman, William Wyler. He was also one of the founding members of the prestigious, still active organization the American Society of Cinematographers, and served as its president from 1937 to 1939. Milner started his career in movies as a projectionist and a newsreel cameraman, and ended it as a nine-time Oscar nominee—and onetime winner, for DeMille’s 1934 megaproduction Cleopatra. His final nod from the Academy came for his stunning, psychologically acute vistas in Anthony Mann’s western The Furies.